HAPPY HALLOWEEN! This is it guys, we made it. Another year. Another Halloween AWESOME-tober-fest countdown. Thank you so much for reading, I hope you have a safe and fun Halloween.

But, before you go, how about one more Fangoria article? How about we look at some random ads that ran in Fangoria throughout the years? Let’s do it!

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From 1988, an ad for the Nightmare on Elm Street board game. That’s right, I said BOARD game. I totally thought this was a video game ad until I actually read it and saw that it comes with a rule book, gameboard, playing cards, and Freddy markers. If you want to get a look at what all the goodness inside the box looks like, check out the entry at Board Game Geek. It looks bizarre. The game board gives me a headache if I look too long.

How about some more Freddy product? Here’s an ad for the 1-900 Freddy’s Dead telephone game. From 1992. The 90s were stuffed with all kinds of 1-900 pop culture telephone numbers. In the same issue of Fangoria as this Freddy ad was an ad for a 1-900 Terminator 2 telephone challenge. Careful, it’s yellow background will burn out your retinas.

Vintage Monster-y ad goodness coming your way! This ad is from 1981, and it’s for mail away Monster Miniatures! All four of these pewter figures sold as a group for $79.95. Postage included! You could also get them in a white metal for about $7 each.

More monster-y goodness! Here are two ads for Screamin’ Vinyl Model Kits! The one on the left is from 1989. It has four options; Jason, Freddy, Elvira, or the generic Werewolf. Each model kid is about $60. Honestly, they look pretty nice. On the right is another Screamin’ models ad, this time from 1996. They’ve greatly expanded their offerings with new product, but for some reason, Jason is missing. You can’t even order him below. However, amongst the new faces you see they added Leatherface, Ash, Lon Chaney from London After Midnight, Pinhead and the Cenobites, and one fantastic looking Crypt Keeper. Different models have different prices, but this seems like a really nice model set.

From 1987, check out this ad for buy 2 books and get a FREE Dracula Pendant! Filled with soil from Dracula’s castle!! Wow. The ad makes sure to note these are the same pendants that were sold in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in the 70s.

Check out this ad for the rugged, compass survival watch. Never get lost on freeways, mountains, deserts, jungles, or oceans! I don’t know how many deserts, jungles, or oceans your average Fangoria reader would encounter in their lifetimes, but they now have the watch to get them out of that predicament if they ever do!

If you know me at all you know I’m a huge fan of movie tie-in merchandise. Especially movie novelizations. Check out the I Read Movies podcast if you don’t believe me. Along with novelizations, I’m also a huge fan of movie souvenir magazines. I’ve talked about them before on this blog (see the Back to the Future movie magazine). But instead of talking about one specific one, how about we take a look at ads for a group of these movie magazines? They ran in Fangoria all through the 80s.

Here’s an ad from Fangoria 40 (1984). Lots of good ones here. Superman III. Star Trek II and III! Rocky II and III! Sometimes these ads would also feature older magazines so clearing houses can clear out their stock to get new magazines. Annie! Not sure I’ve ever seen that one. Conan the Barbarian. The Best of Stallone mag shows up in TONS of ads I’ve seen. I guess they never could sell it so it just kept showing up on all these ads.

Here’s a magazine ad from Fangoria 49 (1985). One year later. See, still trying to sell that Best of Stallone magazine. We see a few similar mags like Rocky II and III, Star Trek II and III. Rambo is new as is that Explorers magazine. I can’t believe these magazine cover prices top out around $3.95. $3.95!! That’s insane.

Here’s an ad from three years later in Fangoria 70 (1988). More old stock like the Star Trek magazines. But we get a bunch of new ones like more Stallone with Over the Top and Rocky IV. We also get Superman IV, The Untouchables and a new Star Trek, Part IV. And there’s a Spaceballs the Magazine over on the left. I’ve never seen that one before. And a nice Masters of the Universe magazine on the right side. This is a really good grouping of movie magazines. And their prices are still crazy. Less than $4?! YES, PLEASE!

Edging ever closer to Halloween! And speaking of Halloween, here’s an ad for a double contest that ran in Fangoria #15 from 1981 that let you win something VERY Halloween-y!

The first contest involves going to see the movie Halloween II in theaters and answering 10 questions. 50 winners will be drawn to win copies of the movie novelization by Jack Martin. Which, today, that Halloween 2 novelization is pretty rare. I would have loved to have won that.

The second contest involves the semi-sequel to Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shock Treatment. You have to explain in 30 words or less why you want a Shock Treatment t-shirt.

It’s Scream Greats Monday! And, it’s the final week of AWESOME-tober-fest 2019! We did it again, this year guys. The home stretch. I really hope you’ve enjoyed yourself thus far, but the festivities are not over yet! We’ve got four more days to go. And today we are looking at another Fangoria Scream Greats poster!

This week’s Scream Greats entry is a good one of Anthony Perkins on the set of Psycho II. It comes from Fangoria #78 (1988). If you haven’t seen it, Psycho II is a pretty good followup to the first Psycho. Not to be confused with Robert Bloch’s Psycho sequel novel, also confusingly called Psycho II. Bloch’s Psycho II is a pretty great little thriller tale on its own that is surprisingly meta for having been written in 1982. I’d recommend it. But the movie Psycho II is a more traditional sequel and is also a pretty good movie sequel considering it’s the followup to one of the greatest thrillers of all time.

It’s Friday! The final Friday of AWESOME-tober-fest 2019, to be exact. I’m still going strong with some Fangoria, but I thought I’d break with the Fangoria coverage for today and do a new Vintage Comic Throwdown cover. And today’s matchup features another gunfighter vs a classic monster like in the very first issue. Take a look at Jesse James Meets The Frankenstein Monster!

This particular cover has an interesting history. It was actually the second cover I made when I started doing this feature, which means it was created back in 2016. There were a few things I didn’t love about the logo I was using so I sat on it. The very first original concept of these covers was to do all “gunfighters vs monsters” concepts. So Billy the Kid vs Dracula was first, then this one would have gone, then I’d do something with Wild Bill Hickock, and then eventually return to Billy the Kid. But then other pop culture properties sort of caught my attention and then you get things like my Godzilla vs Shogun Warriors and A-Team Meets Chuck Norris covers. I must love Frankenstein because I’ve used him a few times. He also popped up fighting athletes in the Winter Olympics!

But I still enjoy doing these and I may get back to the roots of this concept and return to “gunfighters vs monsters” soon. I definitely want to revisit Billy the Kid in these covers. That’s it for this week, stay tuned, next week is Halloween and I’ll have several more Fangoria articles for you then!

If you want to see the previous 15 covers of Cavalcade Comics then check out the archive here.

For most of it’s life, Fangoria ran full page color ads for movies that are either in the theater or about to be released on videocassette. Last time I did Fangoria back in 2014, I talked about a few of them. So let’s take a look at a few more. It’s easy to pull the “big ones” with Ghostbusters or Gremlins. Let’s try to find some more obscure, culty movies. Shall we?

From Fangoria #50 (1985). I’ve never been a huge Godzilla fan but I’m very aware of this particular movie, even if I’ve never seen it. It was marketed pretty heavily here in the states. It’s a heavily redited version of the Japanese Toho film Return of Godzilla. I should sit down and watch some of these sometime.

From Fangoria #52 (1986). An ad for The Stuff on VHS. I have seen this movie and it terrified me. The scene where the kid eats shaving cream to avoid having to eat The Stuff sticks with me to this day.

From Fangoria #70 (1988). An ad for the sequel to one of my favorite zombie movies of all time, Return of the Living Dead. And I’ve still not watched any of these Return sequels. I need to get on that. I love the art for this poster, but it feels like it’s ripping off the Fright Night/Fright Night II posters.

Also from Fangoria #70. It’s not often that Fangoria has two full page movie ads, but issue #70 did. And it’s another sequel. House II is an interesting animal. It’s odd, for sure. But it’s fun. I like that it sort of becomes a western at the end. I may remember this movie better than I remember the original House.

From Fangoria #91 (1990). I’ve not watched any of these Basket Case movies. It’s funny, when I graduated college in 1997, a guy I graduated with gave me a VHS with the first three Basket Case movies on it and told me I had to watch them because they were awesome. In fact, he gave it to me the night we graduated. And I was due to fly out to Dallas, TX in two days for my new job! Yes, I still have that VHS and have still never watched those movies.

From Fangoria #149 (1995). Castle Freak is directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Last time I did Fangoria in 2014, I covered this trio in another movie called From Beyond. I had uncovered this little gem back then, but have not watched it. It sounds interesting.

I’ve looked at these full page movie ads a few times before. As I mentioned earlier I did it back in 2014. And in 2013.

Richard Matheson is a ground breaking, extremely popular genre writer. He wrote the novel I Am Legend that was adapted into a film four times, one of which Matheson himself cowrote the screenplay. He also wrote many of the original Twilight Zone episodes as well as the novels that birthed the movies The Incredible Shrinking Man, Legend of Hell House, Real Steel, What Dreams May Come, Duel and The Box.

In Fangoria #31 (1983), they did an interview with Richard Matheson talking to him about writing the recent movies Jaws 3-D and Twilight Zone the Movie. To be perfectly honest, I really like Jaws 3-D, and I had NO IDEA that Richard Matheson wrote the screenplay for it. MIND. BLOWN.

Some of the Jaws 3 insights he gives in this article include that he likes writing the third movie in a series. You get to break away from the location of the previous two. He also said the studio forced him to use Brody’s sons, Michael and Sean, in the script. He originally had no intention of using any of the Brody family, which now, looking back on that movie, makes SO much sense. He also said the studio wanted him to make the shark in Jaws 3 the same shark that was electrocuted in the second movie! Wow. Glad cooler heads prevailed there. Lots of interesting info in this article including more insights into the writing of Twilight Zone, including why he thinks it didn’t do as well as they expected, and working with Spielberg on the movie Duel.